Fernando Alonso took his unlucky demise from Sprint qualifying on the chin, admitting that his contact with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon was a case of being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
The Aston Martin driver was on a slow lap and making his way through Interlagos’ Turn 1-3 complex when his left front wheel was hit at full speed by Ocon who was on a hot lap in SQ1.
A replay of the action suggested that Ocon had lost control on the exit of the esses and veered off into the Aston Martin, tagging the latter as he passed Alonso on the Spaniard's left.
The Frenchman careered off into the barriers while Alonso was able to nurse his car back to the pits, only for his crews to assess the damage and declare his AMR23 unfit for repair within the session’s remaining time frame.
"Unfortunately, we could not complete qualifying. It is a shame with both cars out of qualifying and a lot of damage on both cars. Not the way we wanted [this to go].
"I've not seen the replay yet, but someone told me that he lost the car a little bit. It's one of those situations - wrong place, wrong moment."
Alonso’s team mate Lance Stroll was unable to pick up in the session where he had left off on Friday when the Canadian achieved an impressive P4 in qualifying for Sunday’s race.
Alonso and Stroll will line up respectively 15th and 17th on tomorrow’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix grid.
"We had great pace yesterday,” added Alonso. “We struggled a little bit more today in SQ1 to go through, so there are still some question marks on our pace.
"But I'm more confident than in Mexico and Austin, so hopefully, it will be a good race."
©AstonMartin
Stroll pointed to traffic as the main culprit of his under-performance in SQ1.
"Just a lot of traffic on my first lap. Around here, you can't afford to be passing three or four cars on your push lap,” he explained.
"That cost us a lot today. I think the car was alright. We weren't too bad. It was just a lot of traffic out there in a short session, everyone trying to do laps.
"I did my first push and my second push; I was a few tenths up and picked up a lot of traffic at Turn 7 pretty much all the way to the end of the lap. Losing tons of downforce in that middle sector."
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